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Sunday, May 4, 2014

Joel Townsley Rogers : The Hanging Rope, 1946

Joel Townsley Rogers

Joel Townsley Rogers is best
known for The Red Right Hand, work
which combines in itself the mystery , horror , fantasy and an evident streak
of eccentricity . And this definitely deserves the benefit of the public and of
the critics. Nevertheless Rogers, not only wrote the thing , but .. a lot more.
Indeed, The Red Right Hand , is just
one of many works he wrote . Rogers was not so much an author of novels, short
or long , but of short stories : he wrote hundreds.

And so The Red Right Hand
was an expansion of a story written and published in the same magazine which
was published on The Hanging Rope: in
fact, the first short story from which was made the famous novel , was
published in March 1945 on New Detective Magazine, unlike The Hanging Rope was released in September 1946.

This sort of long
story (but I would opt more for the meaning of " short novel "
because of a little, but always substantially , the work exceeds the threshold
of 100 pages that is accepted as a limit because we can start talking about the
novel ) , The Hanging Rope , was forgotten for a long time and only in 1990 was
rediscovered by Robert Adey ( author of the Bible ofLocked Rooms , Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes: A Comprehensive
Bibliography ) and Jack Adrian, who together created an anthology I would say historical, The Art of the Impossible , containing short stories and tales of
absolute value , where next to the most famous works (but not much) there are
some almost unknown works . It 's the case of this work of Rogers.

Daniel McCue lives on the
fourth floor of a large luxurious palace , in a large luxury apartment: he is a
wealthy businessman who is also a politician .

Every evening, go to visit him two of his friends: his lawyer
Paul Bean, who is also a friend of his (who after leaving it , in the street is
the object of a joke on the part of boys : he falls , peels one knee and palms
of the hands, and bleeding back to his house, without no one saw in that street him neither helped him) and Father Finley, a priest
devoted to the cause of abandoned cats, mild and quirky . Both , however , left
the building before the murder of the old McCue , and the witness who confirms
it is Boaz , the elevator man . The murder of the old man was accomplished with
the aid of a bottle of champagne( brought by his friend Paul Bean, who presented
it as a gift for his birthday) and then with the poker: but if Paul Bean returns home with bloody
hands , the priest enters a building not far from that where the old McCue is
dead, when he knows that there's no one, to find a cat .

However, in that building,
half deserted , in a bare apartment, devoid of furnishings that are not almost
just a bed, a table and a typewriter, also lives the famous playwright Kerry
Ott, deaf, there abiding, in absolute silence , to find the inspiration for his
new comedy .

Tuxedo Johnny Blythe, former
police lieutenant , coming from Washingtongives the alarm: he came to the apartment of McCue , and found the
handle of the door of the house dirty of something that looks blood . Tuxedo which
is the former son of McCue having married his daughter , before she remarry
Paul Bean and divorce from him. Frightened by the blood, he gets down the
stairs and finds that the goalkeeper, such Ignaz Slipsky, wearing the uniform of the police patrols:
Tuxedo doesn’t knowhe came out from
police . Slipsky confirms to Tuxedo no one came out, and the other says the
door of McCue apartment is locked , having he tried to open it using his key
since he failed.

Together they decide to go
into the house from the outside, from the balconies. The caretaker , Rasmussen,
another weirdo , tells them he saw the devil come out from the apartment of the
old Dan :he would go to recover the soul of the old possessed man.

When Tuxedo and Slipsky arrive
on the fourth-floor balcony by fire escape stairs and break the glass, they find the corpse of Dan with his hands cramped in
the act of grasping the edges of the Bukkara Persian, near the desk Louis XV, the
back of his head smashed by a heavy bottle of Champagne ( brought by Paul ) and
by wild strokes of poker. As Johnny goes to see the front door ( to make sure
whether it is locked from the inside ) and desn’t realize that behind him is Slipsky
, they hear a piercing scream coming from one of the other rooms. Tuxedo rushes towards it, and a
second later Slipsky finds him dazed at the corpse of Kitty Kane , the
beautiful Kitty, whose jugular someone has cut: the warm blood is still gushing
out from the mortal wound of the neck. None , however, has seen the murderer ,
who escaped to the two in no time . He could walk out the door , but it is blocked
for the inner chain , and from the balcony no one comes out. So what? How did
he do? The only possibility is the bathroom window , which faces on a smooth
wall .

The only possibility would
be a window opposite , belonging to another stable : watch the odd case , the
window overlooks the apartment by the famous playwright Kerry Ott, who lives in
a world devoid of its sounds : Ott in fact is deaf . Possible that was just Ott
? Or to kill McCue and Kane were Father Finley ( who just moments before was
seen by Slipsky and Boaz , the man of the elevator, go away ; or Paul Bean,
went away again before Finley, from McCue home ? The fact is that the two men
would have an airtight alibi which is given by Slipsky ; yet the first , who lives in the
same building of Ott, and on his own landing, among a myriad of cats , has been
seen with wearing gloves covered by blood (but he says it was the meat that he
gives her cats ) and one he lost at Ott’s home , where he came in ignoring in
that place lived the playwright , from a few days . Instead Bean was attacked
in the street by the terrible sons by Kitty Kane , hurting and being robbed of
purse , which was found at the Ott home : were they to lose it or was Ott,
penetrated through the window ? The fact is that to put in communication the
two windows would serve a scale or a board like those used by painters to paint
the walls of the rooms. In fact, one of these is found in the apartment
occupied by Ott.

To take care of the
investigation is "Big " Bat O'Brien, Homicide Inspector , who will
turn , and will be misled in the
investigation until Kerry Ott, with the involuntary complicity of a spider, argiope
, will demonstrate that the window could never be used , also for a spider web
that covered it completely . He will indicate to Inspector who could kill at an
absolutely extraordinary manner .

Work of absolute importance,
it is a real masterpiece . It has a tension that takes the reader to the end,
since after the same identification of the murderer, because the end is built
like a thriller : the murderer be able to get away or not? Will he be able to escape
using the escape way that he has developed , a hanging rope , to avoid being
caught?

In the final,are found other things that give a glimpse of
an absolutely diabolical plan .

The novel has also the
features that make it if not unique, at least rare: the plot has a very strong
atmosphere , which almost turns the detective story in a horror story by the oddity
of the situation and by the components that Rogers glimpses , taking care to
give each character a benevolent air that strides and contrasts with a more
hidden : in this , and in the end at nothing granted, could remember Fredric Brown
. A more direct feature exclusively
attributable to him , differentiating him from all other writers is his
literary style , which uses a language sometimes obsolete , with exclusive
words . The construction of the same period , uses a syntax strongly sought,
almost before writing the sentence , he weighed the impact on the reader. These
phrases Sometimes may be too grotesque
if not surreal .

A such perspective would
suggest a slow writing, but obviously at Rogers was an innate characteristic to want and to know write in such way , if we
think to the hundreds of stories that he wrote. From a certain point of view ,
the bizarre and horrorremind me the
stories by Stanley Ellin .

The Hanging Rope , from another
point of view is a kind of synthesis of Mystery (the two impossible crimes) and
Hard Boiled . From this second kind , it takes the claustrophobic atmosphere ,
made almost exclusively indoors , and the topics covered: the playwright could
remind for example a reporter , the politician is disliked ( Dan McCue ), there’s
femme fatale (Kitty Kane) , there is the sad murderer.

However, outside of the
Baroque and refined style (an example is the description of the spider web:
"It is not the sloppy and messy canvas , woven haphazardly in a quarter of
hour by a teridio , but the patient work of an argiope , an octagonal canvas,
geometric , flawless, with four rays of silk. A job that takes time" ) ,
surprises the reader.

It reminded me - certainly
daring comparison - how Marcel Proust set the writing of À la recherche du temps perdu, with a semantics tortuosity that
goes round and round on a certain fact to reveal the hidden aspects as well as
the visible ones . This continuous spin of situations , means that the
suspicions are cast out for things that
appear the most obvious, on all the characters that appear in the plot: for example,
Paul Bean , who falls across the street, mocked by the terrible sons by Kitty Kane,
woman loved in the past by some characters of the story, that gives herself to the
old Dan.There would be nothing strange
if falling, Bean had scraped knees and the palms of his hands were scratched
and then he bled ; but .. the suspect that knocks him Townsley Rogers is that the
blood can belong to old Dan ( then Paul would return later , in the Dan’s
apartment) .

The references to the great
tradition are countless and the same murderer who in some respects may call
some other great previous novels as The
Big Bow Mystery by I. Zangwill and The
Peacock Feather Murders by Carter Dickson, in fact in my opinion it's much
closer to Le mystère de la chambre jaune
by Gaston Leroux.

The last thing I
want to emphasize is that the brilliant idea by Ott on the spider's web , which
essentially concludes the novel “ante litteram” , makes already know who is the
murderer without reaching the final , because the final idoes not have to
reveal the killer’s name, but to ensure that he comes out of the scene in spectacular
fashion.

Notice how the
novel gaits about the subject of blood: on the door handle , on bathroom tiles
, the blood that flows from the neck of Kitty, that flows from the murderer, is
perhaps the most obvious feature of a baroque horror , which is in the same
time very spectacular and cinematographic: each of the sequences is as if it was conceived as a pose
distinct from the next. The repetition of the scenes of blood permeates the
plot also has a golden unhealthy , by grand guignol . The insistence on the
gurgle of blood that comes gushing from the throat of Kitty, terrible because
the blood is associated with the life(
it is as if we were witnessing her death) , brings to my mind the verses of A.E.
Housman : Some can gaze and not be sick ,
But I could never learn the trick . There 's this to say for blood and breath ,
They give a man a taste for death , which are mentioned by P.D.James before
the beginning of her novel, A Taste for
Death .

However, it is interesting
to note the detail of the web of Argiope because
I think it is the direct source of inspiration for other web that in another
novel , more contemporary for us , covers the frame of a window, like a glass :
I'm talking about La toile de Pénélopeby Paul Halter , although Paul interviewed by me long time ago while admitted
to have in his library the novel by Rogers, he did not remember that particular
in a book that he admitted he had read in the 80s.

I think the reference was ,
however, settled in him , unconsciously , and then it produced the idea of a
spider's web that deals with the window frame (let look the note No.4 of interview).

However , the two novels
differ in the solution that is diametrically opposite : in Rogers , the
presence of the web prevents the window may have been used as the entry of the
elusive murderer ; in Halter, the presence of the spider's web is not in itself
a fact that prevents the action, because he , overcoming the obstacle,explains
by Twist how that window could have been
used .

In Halter, basically, there is
the overcoming of the idea base , creating the “plus ultra” than the other,
bearing in mind , however, that in Rogers, to legitimize the web is also the
fact that the window was locked and nailed anyway .

In short , the idea of ​​a spider's
web is the same, but everything changes.

Personal Informations

I am Italian. Once I was reporter, of classical music. Since several years I collaborate with "Il Blog del Giallo Mondadori".
I wrote a lot of stories ( 1 Locked Room Novel also and 1 Locked Room
long tale, both not yet published) almost all "Locked Rooms", readable
on Sherlock Magazine Web site, among which Queen and Rawson apocryphal,
while 3 S.Holmes apocryphal have been published in paper form.
I wrote essays about E.Queen, R.King, Carr, Berkeley, Aveline,
E.d'Errico, S.S.Van Dine, N.Marsh, C.Brand, A.Christie, M.Allingham,
etc..on the blogs: "Il Giallo Mondadori", "La Morte Sa Leggere", and on
sites web: "Sherlock Holmes Magazine" and "EuroPolar".
On italian Mondadori's Blog Giallo, I wrote a history of Locked-Room
Lectures in three parts ( a fourth part is in preparation). Coming soon a my new short story, a classical locked room, will be published from an important american publishing house.I own five blogs about Crime fiction (3 at italian language and 2 at english language) and 1 of Classical Music.